Calm Before and During the Storm
Dear Friends,
Welcome to June’s Substack.
In my blog this month—Calm Before and During the Storm—I consider the North Star amidst chaos.
The Writer at Risk section focuses on the case of Pham Doan Trang from Vietnam, sentenced to nine years in prison for her writing and activism supporting a more democratic Vietnam.
In Books to Check Out is a pairing of two novels taking on complex political stories with simple narratives of devoted beekeepers, one in the Ukraine—Andrey Kurkov’s Grey Bees—and the other Tunisian writer Yamen Manai’s The Ardent Swarm.
In the Scene section you’ll find new photos along with text from The Far Side of the Desert.
Thanks again to friends and new readers who’ve come out to bookstores, book clubs and online to share my novels The Far Side of the Desert and Burning Distance. I look forward to staying in touch and meeting more readers at future events. In Book News you’ll find a recording of the Sisters in Crime gathering I spoke at in Los Angeles, a calendar for June, and other news.
If you’re engaged by the novels, thank you for telling friends and leaving a review with online booksellers. Reviews help spread the word!
I hope you enjoy these and other features and share this free monthly Substack On the Yellow Brick Road with friends!
Calm Before and During the Storm
Poised on the threshold of summer, of university protests and disrupted graduations, of US political conventions in July and August, of threatening weather with tornados and hurricanes churning on both US coasts and in the middle of the country, I pause in a patch of early morning sun to savor and seal a moment of calm.
Though I won’t be at the political conventions—may even be out of the country for one of them—and will hopefully miss the worst of summer weather, storms appear on the horizon, and it does no harm to prepare by identifying and fixing one’s North Star.
Before the arguments begin or untruths unfurl, or provocations proliferate among the citizenry or even in one’s own family during the US election season, I pause in gratitude that we are allowed to disagree and even protest nonviolently. I am grateful when journalists I know and those I read and listen to work to uncover facts and report in an unbiased fashion. These, however, are not my North Star. I rely instead on a more transcendent light, lodged deeper in a universe that moves towards harmony. I see evidence of this harmony in people caring for each other in the smallest details, in strangers who regularly hoisted my heavy suitcase filled with books and papers into the overhead for me as I traveled on a book tour, in the Uber driver originally from Uzbekistan who stopped en route in NYC to buy me a bottle of water. Small kindnesses we offer each other are the fabric of our citizenry and the evidence that we can be and continue to evolve into a more perfect union.
In the most intractable conflicts between nations, it is the citizens who inevitably must find peace with each other, and perhaps it is with the citizens that the seeds of peace can begin to grow even when politicians are deadlocked. I recall stories from the Balkans War in a memoir Worlds Apart by Ambassador Swanee Hunt. I quote here from the review I wrote in The Christian Science Monitor a decade ago, along with a link to the full article.
The city is surrounded. Shelling rains down on the population. Sniper fire, bombs, mortars erupt from all directions. There are no safe havens for civilians; dozens are killed each day. The international community meets, protests, debates what should be done. Powerful players like Russia obstruct action. Sanctions are tightened, but it is citizens who suffer most. Outside nations are willing to offer humanitarian aid, but are conflicted about arming the opposition. The UN organizes peacekeeping forces, but the mandate and rules of engagement are unclear. The siege and the deaths continue … for years.
This description could be from today’s headlines in Syria, but instead it is the siege of Sarajevo in Bosnia 20 years ago. The paralysis of the international community to intervene and prevent the killings of citizens is still haunting.
In Worlds Apart, former Austrian Ambassador Swanee Hunt chronicles her years (1993-1997) on the inside and the outside of the corridors of war in Bosnia. As the US Ambassador located in Vienna, she sat at embassy dinners, met with European and US government officials, engaged in countless discussions of what should be done. She also used her position, both geographic and political, to visit with the citizens of Bosnia dozens of times in the country and to bring citizens outside the country to meet with each other….
I hope you’ll read the full review linked above and also the book.
And so I will continue to pause in the mornings and savor the light and the promise and endeavor to add my own small and large kindnesses along the way.
I wanted to share the video of my recent event with Sisters in Crime Los Angeles.
Additional selected recordings of events and interviews include:
Malaprop’s Bookstore and Café in Asheville, NC
Kinokuniya Bookstore in New York City with Salil Tripathi
Baum on Books on WSHU Public Radio
Interview with Anna Roins of Authorlink
Interview with Deborah Kalb
For more podcasts, videos and interviews, click here.
Pleased to see The Far Side of the Desert included in Bookreporter’s Summer Readings recommendations. Check out all the books on their list. Happy reading!
“The Far Side of the Desert by Joanne Leedom-Ackerman is a razor-sharp tale of sisters, daughters, spies, and lovers; some relatable, some who appear to be beyond redemption, and some whose acts of good or evil are much harder to tease apart. Deftly managing the tightrope between the tightly-paced geopolitical and the nuanced psychological, Leedom-Ackerman delivers a thriller that transcends genre and has stayed with me long after I read it in one breathless sitting. The Far Side of the Desert is one of my top reads this year!”
—Deborah Goodrich Royce, nationally bestselling and award-winning author of Reef Road, Ruby Falls, and Finding Mrs. Ford
My novel Burning Distance (Oceanview Publishing, 2023 and recent paperback in 2024) was honored by the 2024 American Legacy Book Awards as a Finalist in the Best Mystery/Suspense, Thriller, and Cover Design categories.
“I was immediately engrossed in the lives of Joanne Leedom-Ackerman's characters and their fascinating and compelling stories. Joanne has the ability to take the big issues of contemporary life (including the clash of cultures and a remarkable grasp of the weapons trade) and render them in the contexts of love, conscience, and the consequence of choice. She reminds us as did Donne that we each are a piece of the continent, a part of the whole of humanity, and that no matter how difficult the time, that love and peace and hope can be realities rather than abstracts."
—Eric Lax, author of Faith Interrupted
Below is a June calendar of events for The Far Side of the Desert. More events will be added and details for the events below and for past events can be found on the Speaking page of my website.
Thank you to all who came together and shared the Spring readings and conversations.
Pham Doan Trang (Vietnam)
(Sources include PEN International, PEN America, Suisse Romand PEN, US Congress Human Rights Commission, 88 Project: Free Speech in Vietnam, Committee to Protect Journalists)
In the middle of the night October 6, 2020, Pham Doan Trang, author, journalist and activist, was arrested at her home in Ho Chi Minh City by Vietnamese police. Held for over a year incommunicado, she was finally allowed to meet with a lawyer in October 2021. Earlier, in 2015 police had broken both her legs in a confrontation during an environmental protest, leaving her with a limp. During the year incommunicado she was denied adequate medical care.
Charged with “making, storing, spreading information, materials, items for the purpose of opposing the state of Socialist Republic of Vietnam,” Trang was sentenced after a one-day trial to nine years in prison and moved to a remote prison hundreds of miles from her home, isolating her from her family’s ability to visit.
Trang has published numerous books including A Handbook for Freedom Fighters, A Handbook of Non-violent Resistance Techniques, and Politics of a Police State and was co-founder and editor of the dissident magazine Luat Khoa tap Chil (Law Study) and the independent information website “The Vietnamese.” She was also author and co-editor of The Liberal Publishing House but subsequently resigned because of security threats.
Pham Doan Trang has received awards for her work, including the 2020 IPA Prix Voltaire Award, the 2022 Martin Ennals Award, and the Committee to Protect Journalists International Press Freedom Award in recognition of her reporting in the face of persecution. Last month PEN America recognized her with its Freedom to Write Award, which was accepted by her friend Quynh-Vi Tran, co-founder and executive director of Legal Initiatives for Vietnam.
Anticipating her arrest, Trang wrote a letter in 2019 and recorded a video urging the Vietnamese public to continue the struggle for democratic reforms.
JUST IN CASE I AM IMPRISONED
Saigon, Vietnam
May 27th, 2019
Dear friends,
No one wants to sit in prison. But if prison is inevitable for freedom fighters, if prison can serve a pre-determined purpose, then we should happily accept it. Therefore, I have set several goals for my imprisonment (should it happen). Going to prison may help to accomplish some of these goals, but achieving all of them can only be done with your help. Thus, I would like to share these goals with you, friends, and rely on you to help fulfill them after I am taken into custody. Thank you so much in advance for your support….
I would like you to link my imprisonment with new laws to change how Vietnam conducts elections and forms its National Assembly. Let the public know that I research political rights, especially ones regarding voting and elections. I am among those who have suggested new pieces of legislation to reform elections and the National Assembly, and I am imprisoned partly because of these previous efforts.
A large social movement calling for the adoption of these new laws, whose drafts I have made contributions to, would be ideal.
Encourage people to read my books. I want my imprisonment to spur greater readership for my books; make them accessible and make them available in all forms: electronic, printed, or audio. These are the titles that I want to promote most:
a) Chinh Tri Binh Dan (Politics for the Masses / Politics for the Common People);
b) Câm Nang Nui Tü (A Handbook for Families of Prisoners);
c) Phan Khäng Phi Bao Luc (On Non-violent Resistance Techniques);
d) Politics of a Police State; Ching Ta Lam Bão (Citizen Journalism); All of my publications on voting and elections
Take advantage of my imprisonment. The Vietnamese government has always used prisoners of conscience (POC) as pawns to trade with foreign governments. By releasing a POC and deporting him or her, the government benefits in several ways: they gain trade deals, neutralize a rallying symbol for the people, and falsely appear to respect human rights, which hedges calls for political reform.
I would hate to see myself become a pawn for the government to trade. Instead, I want my imprisonment to be used not just by foreign governments, but by Vietnamese democracy activists to negotiate with the Vietnamese government, with a focus on new legislation for elections and formation of the National Assembly. It is imperative that Vietnamese democracy activists sit at the negotiating table. Bear in mind: the lengthier the prison term, the more leverage you have to negotiate with the Vietnamese government and pressure them into doing what we request.
In other words. I don't want a campaign that calls on the Vietnamese government to simply "free Trang". I want a comprehensive social movement that pushes the government to "free Trang and pass new election laws", "free Trang and ensure free and fair elections", "free Trang, free elections" and so on….
Please take care of my mother. Let her know that she and her daughter are not alone. Make sure the police do not harm my mother, my brothers, or my sisters-in-law; they have often been threatened by police. I will not admit guilt, confess, or beg for leniency; do not believe police if they say or indicate otherwise. However, I will always assert that I am the author of the books Chinh Tri Binh Dan, Câm Nang Nuoi Tü, Phan Khang Phi Bao Luc, and other works published under my name, and I will always assert that I want to abolish dictatorship in Vietnam. I'd like to be described as an author and journalist who writes to raise public awareness regarding democracy and human rights, and who advocates for social change.
If possible, send me my guitar and try to have the wardens accept it. For me, the guitar is like my Bible. I don't care about prison terms, so I don't expect defense lawyers to help reduce my sentence, which may be impossible anyway. I would prefer defense lawyers who can work as communication channels between me and the outside world.
Do not give me any priority over other prisoners of conscience. Advocate for the others first, then me. If you'd like to advocate for my release, please start a campaign from the third or fourth year and keep in mind the requisite goals I stated above. Ideally, I'd like to be freed and allowed to stay in Vietnam instead of being expelled, with the goals above achieved. I don t want freedom for just myself; that's too easy. I want something greater: freedom for Vietnam. It might seem like some grand goal, but it's totally possible—with your support.
—Pham Doan Trang
To Take Action for Pham Doan Trang: #FreeTrang
Release Pham Doan Trang immediately and unconditionally and overturn criminal convictions
Ensure that, pending Pham Doan Trang’s release, she is held in conditions that meet international human rights standards for the treatment of prisoners, including by providing her access to adequate health care and regular communication with her family and lawyers.
Send appeals to:
Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh
1 Hoang Hoa Tham Styret, Ba Dinh district, Hanoi, Vietnam
Email: tthongtinchinhphu@chinhphu.vn
Social Media: https://twitter.com/vngovtportal
Minister of Foreign Affairs Bui Thanh Son
No. 1 Ton that Dam Street, Dien Bien, Ba Dinh district, Hanoi, Vietnam
Email: bc.mfa@mofa.gov.vn
Twitter/X: @FMBuiThanhSon
Send copies to the Embassy of Vietnam in your own country. Embassy addresses may be found here: https://omw.mofa.gov.vn/en-us/Pages/default.aspx
An attack on a writer, the shutting down of a publishing house, the torching of a newspaper reduce the space in the world where ideas can flow. Freedom of expression is vital to writers and to readers but is challenged daily around the world. Listed here are organizations whose work on human rights and in particular issues of freedom of expression I’ve been engaged with directly and indirectly over the years. Some of the organizations have broader agendas, but all have contributed to keeping space open for the individual voice.
PEN International (with its 147 centers in over 100 countries)
PEN American Center
English PEN
PEN/Faulkner Foundation
Human Rights Watch
Amnesty International
Amnesty International USA
International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX)
Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
Article 19
Index on Censorship
Poets and Writers
Authors Guild
International Center for Journalists
I first met Andrey Kurkov, one of Ukraine’s imminent novelists, at a PEN Congress a number of years ago and read his memorable novel Death and the Penguin, but I was interrupted in finishing his longer novel Grey Bees. It sat on my shelf for a long time, my loss which I’ve now redeemed. I don’t recall how I came across Tunisian writer Yamen Manai’s novel The Ardent Swarm. It must have been during covid on a zoom program at the Alan Cheuse International Writers Center at George Mason University. I dutifully bought his book, but it sat on my shelf, along with my good intentions until I began wandering among the overflowing books to see which I might pair with Kurkov’s Grey Bees. There waiting was this memorable tale. Both authors have taken on complex political stories with simple honest beekeepers as the custodians of truth, both with a commitment to truth and life that rises above politics and nationality and resides in the human heart—the realm of literature. I hope you’ll enjoy these brief reviews and the books themselves.
Andrey Kurkov’s novel Grey Bees unwinds the story of an Everyman—if only he were every man—in a country in conflict and crisis, caught in the Grey Zone between loyalist and separatist warring factions in the Ukraine. A former inspector of coal mines, now retired on disability, Sergey Sergeyich is one of only two people left in his village of Little Starhorodivka where he and the other resident, a former adversary from school days, learn in their isolation to help each other. In winter it is bitter cold, little food, no electricity or internet and only an intermittent charged cell phone.
Devoted to his bees—creatures more noble and reliable than people—Sergeyich embarks on a journey out of his village as spring comes so that his bees can collect their pollen and make honey in a more peaceful place.
As he journeys through check points of the war zone among Russians, Tartar and Ukrainian citizens attempting to live their lives, he meets a lone woman shopkeeper, a wife of a friend who has disappeared, that man’s abandoned children and others. Grey Bees is a kind of Pilgrim’s Progress, tracking one man’s journey through troubled humanity. In his own village and on the road, he faces choices, and in spite of the dangers and nightmares on the ground (reflected in his own nightmares), he manages to adhere to a moral compass.
While the reader may not grasp all the nuances of the various places and borders—Donetsk, Donbass, Tartars or Ukrainian or Russian forces—the theme and journey are compelling as Sergeyich builds relationships and helps others. He yearns for human contact at the same time he tries to stay apart and service his bees. He understands their work and needs even as he comes to understand there are those who would subvert them.
Passages from Grey Bees are below so you can hear the voice of the book:
They’ve started shooting over there. If I release the bees at home, they might get spooked by the shelling and fly away. I’d lose them.
“Aha!” The camouflaged man smiled, as if pleased to have learned something new. “So bees are afraid of blasts, are they? Interesting. Have you got your papers?”…
If it weren’t for the bees, he wouldn’t have gone anywhere; he would have taken pity on Pashka and not left him all alone. But bees don’t understand what war is. Bees can’t switch from peace to war and back again, as people do. They must be allowed to perform their main task – the only task in their power – to which they were appointed by nature and by God: collecting and spreading pollen. That’s why he had to go, to drive them out to where it was quiet, where the air was gradually filling with the sweetness of blossoming herbs, where the choir of these herbs would soon be supported by the choir of flowering cherry, apple, apricot and acacia trees….
They worked for him, and they asked for virtually nothing in return – just love and care. And he had given them plenty of love, plenty of his knowledge and experience, and, of course, plenty of care. In fact, he had probably cared more than most beekeepers. After all, he had worried about his bees all winter, protecting them from the war, from the noise of explosions, from the cold. He had protected them both in his thoughts and in reality, over which, in the end, he had precious little control.”…
It was the bees that worried Sergeyich, because without them, the meaning of his life, the sense in his departure from Little Starhorodivka would be lost. The meaning would evaporate, abandoning him to a meaningless state. It frightened him even to imagine such a state, the likes of which he had never found himself in before. He dressed in the living room – having brought his trousers, shirt, sweater and socks out of the bedroom – and put on his shoes in the hallway. Then he shoved his mobile and its charger into his jacket pocket and, his hand tightly squeezing the car keys, left the hospitable house, shutting the door carefully behind him….
You’ll need to read this compelling tale to learn what an “ardent swarm” is. It is well worth discovering. As with Andrey Kurkov’s Grey Bees, Tunisian novelist Yamen Manai’s bees represent the wisdom and hope of the natural world. Beekeeper Sidi looks to his bees for the solace that many people are lacking in his country. Referring to the bees as “his girls,” Sidi notes they never sting him as they stroll across his hands. To him they represent “the dance of life” which advances as “the small blessed creatures flew from flower to flower pollinating the fields and the forest in a waltz of colors that brightened the eyes and the soul alike.” When tragedy strikes and one of his hives is brutally destroyed and 30,000 bees slaughtered, the whole village is affected.
Set in the fictional village of Nawa in North Africa and a fictional country Qafar, awash in money from oil and gas, the geopolitical story of potentates plotting for wealth and hegemony after the Arab Spring narrows into the story of the wise beekeeper and his villagers, most of whom are illiterate and lack running water and electricity and look up to the more educated Sidi, who long ago chose his ascetic life.
The mystery of the bees’ attackers tracks well as fact and as parable for the dynamic in this North African/Middle Eastern country in transition to its first democratic election. The citizens must contend with the excessive wealth of a few and with ambitious fundamentalists promoting the Party of God in a “democracy” being taken over by a hypocritical theocracy. The corrupt past evolves into an autocratic present, neither of which place the citizens at the center.
Yamen Manai’s novel of the bees and their terrifying adversary—the giant Asian killer hornet—that has been smuggled in, reads in part as an action adventure story compared to Kurkov’s more contemplative Grey Bees. There are a few fight scenes involving the bees and their enemy that rival the best of battle scenes.
In the end, both novels return to nature and its simple wisdom of purpose with an honest man as custodian. In the latter novel is also the promise that “the ardent swarm” may be the means and the hope for contending with enemies and securing the future.
Below is a passage from The Ardent Swarm so you can hear the voice of the book:
Everyone knew that Sidi would give his life for his girls, and do so without the slightest hesitation. His love was such that he was capable of anything. Hadn’t he devoted his life to them, building them citadel upon citadel? Hadn’t he confronted a Numidian bear just to bring them the most beautiful flowers? Hadn’t he defied princes and renounced love to dedicate himself entirely to them? And so, when news that many of them had died under troubling circumstances spread from mouth to mouth, a reaction seemed inevitable….
Granted he was an odd character and could lose his temper at times, but everyone liked him and held him in high esteem. The incident was therefore a complete mystery.
But that didn’t stop people from talking about it, which is what they did all day long, recalling seasons past and bemoaning a world going downhill.
“It happened in the middle of the day,” maintained Bicha, the hairdresser.
“They were disemboweled, cut in half,” lamented Kheira, the village grocer, to Baya, who had come to buy some sugar.
When the village elders were questioned, they went even further. “This is clearly the sign of a curse.”…
Sharing here images and a passage of text in The Far Side of the Desert.
“They stayed in Spain where they interviewed the police, the soldiers, bus and train personnel, police, military, pilgrims and others along the Camino de Santiago. They moved out beyond the city and took detours through the fishing villages along the Galician coast, showing pictures of Monte as they searched for her trail.”
(Over the years I’ve accumulated a running list of words I haven’t known from two main sources: WordDaily and WordGenius)
Caliginous
/Kuh-lij-uh-nuhs/
Part of speech: adjective
1. Misty, dim; obscure.
Examples:
"The sky had grown caliginous by the time I left the library."
"The forest path was overgrown and caliginous, even in the daytime."
"In the early hours, the bay is covered in a caliginous blanket of fog.
Copacetic
/Koh-puh-set-ik/
Part of speech: adjective
1. In excellent order.
Examples:
"We're copacetic over here; you can focus on helping the other guests."
"The classroom was in disarray after the art project, but it was copacetic by the time I left for the day."
I’ve spoken at bookstores, university classes, book luncheons and in-person and zoom book clubs and look forward to more ahead. I enjoy giving readings and addressing audiences in many venues and moderating discussions on a wide range of topics and most of all meeting readers.
Click here for a list of future and past public events.
Or fill out the speaking request form to schedule an event.
I like engaging with readers so if you are in a Reading Group or Book Club and read one of my books, I’m glad to be in touch by email, zoom, or when possible in person. I can also suggest discussion topics.
Fill out the reading group form here to schedule a meeting.
